Freesat - Escape Sky TV but use their satellite dish

Satellite is a great distribution medium. The transmitter is really
tall, about 23000 miles high, so you don't have all the fun and games
of things outside your house getting in the way most of the time. The
aerial is massively directional and frequencies are really high, so
your light switches, neighbour's moped etc doesn't get to interfere
with the signal. You either can get satellite, or you can't, and the
reason you can't is right in front of you, like having to knock down
the block of flats across the street from you. Nothing more than a
hundred yards away from you will stop you receiving satellite signals.

What's not to like about satellite TV?

Aesthetics.

A
satellite dish is not a thing of beauty. Let's face it,
they're hellaciously ugly. We've become more used to them now that
people have been putting them up for 20 years or so. In the early
days, the rival satellite firm were able to use more power
and a smaller aerial, and made a particular point of not needing a huge
ugly satellite dish. They were right - the dishes looked ugly compared
ot the smaller BSB "squarials". Where BSB screwed up is not
watching their backs while the Digger bought up programmes people
actually wanted to watch, their desire being enough that they were
prepared to screw three-foot lumps of aluminium to their houses. Okay,
so BSB also screwed up by not checking if their smaller squarials
worked.

No in-house distribution

One satellite LNB feeds
one receiver. Now people tend to fit quad LNBs to a dish which can feed
up to four receivers, but each receiver has to have a dedicated cable
to the dish. Most folk don't need more than four receivers in an
average house, but the wiring is still a right pain to accommodate.
Bigger dwellings use special switches and a four-wire trunk
distribution system, which is loads of cost, but that is the domain of
professional installers, and geeks.

Historical Cost of the Digger's Dime eliminated by Freesat

Sky
saw the issues on freeview and moved swiftly to stiff the alternatives
when UK satellite TV went digital, seizing control of the digital
satellite distribution platform (by paying for it) and locking
broadcasters into their nasty proprietary NDS encryption system and
subscription. You want digital satellite TV, you had to pay the
Sky toll to unscramble the signal, and since Sky owned/leased the means
of transmission they got to say how much.

BBC breakout

The
BBC was the first to break free and establish thier presence on Astra
independently of Sky, and were followed by ITV, then Channel 4 and
finally Channel 5, all of which are now available free to air, along
with some of the related channels (FilmFour, More4 and E4), so now
there is a real alternative to Freeview. You also get a couple of
high-definition channels if you have a HD set-top box.

What do you need to receive Freesat?

Ex
Sky subscribers already have got everything they need, whip the Sky
card out of your receiver and you're away. Sky signed up an awful lot
of people over the years and not all of them stayed, but there are a
lot of satellite dishes attached to British homes. You may have one of
these old dishes, in which case it is worth trying a cheap satellite
receiver on it.

No dish? Use Sky to your advantage - see if you can blag some of the install costs from Sky

It's
worth first checking what Sky are offering as new deals to sign up
customers, as they often discount the install and digibox for new
customers. The trick to this is to remember to cancel just before the
trial period is up. You generally get to keep the satellite receiver
too, it's a hard one ot beat. Of course, Sky hope you will like all the
other channels and will continue to pay, so they are just reducing the
cost of entry. They fully expect to get some refuseniks, there's
nothing wrong in being one of them.

You can do a DIY satellite install, but it is a pain

Rigging
a dish can be a DIY job, though you need to check first that you can
see the satellite. The dish needs to face about 28 degrees east of
South (ie needs to go on a south-facing wall or be on a bracket at the
southern corner on a E or W facing wall, if you are north-facing you
are out of luck. There are enough dishes about, look for how neighbours
have installed thers. If you have a garden but only a north-facing
aspect, or you just don't want a dish spoiling your house, you can
ground-mount the dish north of your house and receive the signal from
over it, the satellite signal arrives at quite a steep angle to the
horizontal. If the eaves of your house are 8m high you want to be about
10m away from the north-facing wall for this trick to have a good
chance of working. Satellite signals don't really pass through anything
solid, so there aren't any set-top aerials
for the cowboy riggers thankfully. The problem with doign a DIY
satellite install is that unlike analogue systems, you need to get
the satellite dish pointed roughly right to get anything on the
receiver at all, and there are many satellites close together in the
geostationary orbit. Alignment is a matter of less than a couple of
degrees horizontally and vertically, which is a lot more critical than
a TV aerial. It all depends on how technically-minded you are. And you
can end up spending a fair amount on alignment knick-knacks, which make
like a lot easier in finding the satellites, but the costs need to be
recovered over several installs. For the enterprising students, or
renters looking to move a few times, it can make sense, as you will
have to realign the dish each time you move. But if you're only
planning to do one install, then there is an awful lot to be said for
getting someone in for the install, even if it is a Sky teaser
offer!

Satellite Receivers

A satellite dish needs to go into a suitable receiver. A
used Sky digibox can be had on ebay, but now any DVB satellite
receiver can be used because the signals are unencrypted, and these are
available from Maplin and varieus electrical retailers. You can't use a
Freeview receiver for satellite, the signal is totally different.
Likewise, an integrated receiver with the TV has to be
freesat-compatible, not freeview compatible, and if you want digital
recording you need to use a freesat PVR (personal video recorder). So
if your reason for using freesat is because you've had grief with
Freeview you get to part with more cash and add some more boxes under
your TV...

Set-top aerials are not usually balanced, so you will pick
up more interference on the cable than you would with one designed for the
job. It'll still be a lot better that on top of your TV!

Run, do not walk, from anybody trying to sell you a UHF TV
aerial with a parabolic dish on it. To be effective the diameter of the dish
needs to be at least one wavelength, which is 0.5m at 600Mhz for the middle
of the UHF TV
band. That is one BIG set-top aerial. Any dish at UHF TV frequencies is
marketing frippery, not engineering.

60dBuV minimum, 80dBuV maximum into 75 ohms if you want to
be pedantic.